2004--- The Year I Became a Conspiracy Theorist

Yes indeed. Before 2004, I had some doubts about 9/11, but they were mainly of the variety of LIHOP (i.e. Bush "Let It Happen On Purpose").

However, as I detailed in an earlier post:

on 9/11 itself, I thought something strange happened, that I couldn't believe how badly my country's defenses had been subverted. Nonetheless on that day and for the next few weeks I didn't really question the official story too much. Sure, I thought, how fortunate they found the cars the hijackers had used parked at the airport, and how convenient the hijackers had left behing incriminating evidence. But it was only after hearing strange report after strange report dribble out for months after the attacks that I began to question how much the government really knew before the attacks.

Sure, several FBI agents had been suspcious of Arab men taking flight lessons, and when they tried to bring this up with their superiors, they were told to ignore it, but this was just bad luck. The intelligence people just couldn't connect the dots, and they weren't communicating properly with each other (there was this "wall"), and there were restrictions on what they could probe into. But really-- it was just an innocent mistake.

I guess what really set my alarm bells off was the story where two of the 9/11 hijackers had been living in an apartment in San Diego with a muslim FBI informant, who says he didn't know anything about the plot. Two hijackers were LIVING with a frigging FBI informant but no one knew what they were up to? Yeah, right. He didn't know. What a shame.

Then there was the story how before 9/11 one of the hijackers was interviewed by a CIA agent at an airport in Yemen, and then released. He was just asked a few questions, and they decided he was no threat. Okaaay.

Then there was the widely circulated story how the National Security Agency decrypted messgaes from Al Qaeda talking of the date of the 9/11 attack, but unfortunately, the NSA just translated it on September 12th. What a damn shame. But the date of the 12th always made me wonder-- isn't that just a little bit hard to believe? They were JUST a day late?

Then of course there were the warnings that Bush had saying Al Qaeda was trying to hijack airplanes. And the suspicious lack of response from the Bush administration to these warnings.

And I was ALWAYS highly suspicious of the anthrax attacks. The targets were exactly who the Bush administration would like to intimidate: journalists and key Democratic senators. And then the anthrax appeared to be a domestic source, and the anthrax mailer interestingly pretended to be a muslim fanatic. WHY muslim fanatics would target journalists and key Democratic senators was never really explained-- I guess no one could explain it, which is why the media have tended to ignore the story.

But oddly, what made me really put on my "tinfoil hat" was the murder of Nicholas Berg in Iraq. He was beheaded on video by an odd looking group of apparent Islamic terrorists. The reason I wondered about the murder was the timing--- exactly when the Abu Ghraib abuses were coming to light and provoking a huge outrage. The decapitation of Berg was an amazing distraction from Abu Ghraib, and the Abu Ghraib story lost most of its steam after the Nick Berg killing. Then I started reading about the life of Nick Berg, and he sounded a bit like he was a some kind of intelligence operative. Then, wonder of wonders, Nick Berg was linked to 9/11 via the "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. Apparently, Nick berg shared his e-mail account with Moussaoui and another of the 9/11 hijackers. What an amazing coincidence! This jaw-dropping link was explained as merely because Nick Berg was VERY outgoing and he liked middle easterners. Okaaay.

The Nick Berg story sent me around the internet quite a bit, and I stumbled upon a fellow named Michael Wright who postulated that the 9/11 attacks were some kind of sting operation gone awry. This scenario seemed to explain a lot, and I bought it for a while, but more reading led me to believe an even darker version of what happened on 9/11. In any case, Mike Wright lives in Oklahoma, and is very familiar with Oklahoma University. His theory is that the president of OU, David Boren, collaborated with George Tenet, the CIA director, in this 9/11 sting operation gone bad. The reason Mike Wright got onto this theory is that one of the tickets used by the 9/11 hijackers was bought at a computer terminal in the OU unversity library. Here's the kicker: the person who bought the ticket was not an Arab or middle-easterner, but a caucasian American. The FBI won't tell who this was, but Wright speculated it was Nick Berg.

Well, if you have a caucasian American collaborating with the 9/11 hijackers, and you put together all the other facts I have said above, plus many many many other stories that I don't have time to go into (e.g. what Sibel Edmonds has said, the fact that several Al Qaeda members are/were apparently CIA assets, the fact that many governments have planned and used terror as a propaganda tool), it leads to one troubling and earth-shaking conclusion: a number of people in the US government knew about the 9/11 plot and actively facilitated it. It simply is just too hard to explain all these things as coincidences and harmless facts that merely look bad.

Finally, there is the fact that Geroge W. Bush's father, George H. W. Bush was CIA director and has been involved in quite a bit of known skull-duggery, and the fact that 9/11 served as a perfect excuse to launch a whole series of wars into the middle east, wars which suited the agenda of many people who are in the Bush administration.

So.... if anyone out there has read this far, tell me-- what part of this is hard to believe?

So, I will post my last post of the year of 2004 on that note.

Happy New Year to everybody out there, and let's hope 2005 is better than the last four years!

Thought of the Day: What Would Jesus Do About 9/11?

Would he support the war in Afghanistan? (I doubt it)

Would he support the Iraq war? (I doubt it)

Would he turn the other cheek? (possibly)

Would he investigate the truth behind 9/11 even if it involved a US government conspiracy? (I'd like to think so)

When Thinking About the Death Toll of the Tsunami

Think about the fact that over 100,000 Iraqis have died since we invaded.

The Tsunami death toll is horribly tragic.

But we caused the deaths in Iraq.

This contrast is not to detract from the Tsunami tragedy, but to emphasize out how horrible Iraq has been in the past 20 months.

Abolish the CIA

Okay-- I'm wondering, what net good has the CIA done for the US?

Their covert operations result in death and destruction and havok around the world, and this has gone on for decades.

Even by conventional wisdom, they screw things up and/or cause trouble:
1) Bay of Pigs
2) Not predicting collapse of Soviet Union
3) Not intercepting the 9/11 plot
4) Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction
5) Torturing prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib

(just a quick list of what I can think of right now)

Their one major success I can think of-- helping the downfall of the Soviet Union by inciting the Afghanistan conflict, training and arming the muhajadeen resulting in the empire's military getting bogged down there-- according to conventional wisdom resulted in a horrible "blowback" that led to 9/11.

So, for all the bad they clearly do, is there any net good that comes from the CIA's work? (Let's not count enriching the coffers of wall street financiers.)

Is there any indispensible thing the CIA does to TRULY make the US safer?

CIA and Politicans Have Over-Hyped the Possibility that Terrorists Could Obtain and Use a Nuclear Bomb

In this WaPo article.

Not surprising really.

Uggh

This is NOT good:

WASHINGTON, D.C. Running below the surface of the year-end self-congratulatory assertions of American supremacy (as in Monday's Washington Times: "The world really is becoming more 'American' ") are warnings, often ignored, of our decline. The steady loss of the dollar against the euro is one. The spiraling trade deficit is another.

And in the past weeks, there were two serious economic signs signaling momentous change, if not outright decline.

The first concerns China's invasion of Canadian oil fields, heretofore a U.S. energy fiefdom. The second came in the form of an all-but-hidden report from the Department of Agriculture that America, the breadbasket of the world, is now a net importer of food.

And this is quite stunning:

For the first time in decades, the U.S. will not turn an agricultural trade surplus, the Economic Research Service reported on November 22. The Agriculture Department couldn't say why. It could not explain how Bush managed to run down a $13.6 billion agricultural trade surplus in 2001 to zero in 2005.

Tell me again why big business likes Bush again? Is it just pure selfishness on the part of executives?

The Sound of Heads Exploding

This article from Editor and Publisher gives some insight into the minds of the fascist right:

On the Thursday before Christmas, Al Neuharth, former Gannett bigwig and founder of USA Today, quietly suggested in his weekly column for that newspaper that the U.S. should start bringing home our troops from Iraq “sooner rather than later.”

This hardly seemed like a radical, traitorous notion. For one thing, it appeared in an opinion column, and surely, in our country, every American has a right to his or her opinion? Secondly, it came at a time when, according to Gallup, a majority of American now believe it was a mistake to invade Iraq in the first place, and feel the war is not going well for us. Finally, since so few in the media have called for a withdrawal, you would think those who strongly support the war would not feel unduly threatened by one man's opinion.

Yet, our brief article about the Neuharth column got linked at numerous other Web sites, and drew more letters, pro and con, than virtually any story we have ever posted. We presented a few excerpts from those letters in a second article on Dec. 24, but we did not quote from some of the nastiest--and, believe me, there were plenty in that category to choose from.

Just to give you an idea of what's out there, in the zeitgeist, here are a few additional extracts. They represent dozens of others in the same vein. One should keep in mind that Neuharth, besides his professional accomplishments, served his country in World War II in France, Germany and the Phillippines.

***
George Wyman: “Mr. Neuharth is simply UnAmerican.”

Jeffrey A. Norris: “Cowards and traitors like Al Neuharth want all the comforts they know and enjoy, without a sacrifice to buy it.”

Frank Butash, West Hartford, CT.: “Apparently it's easier to run with jackals than to stand up for your country when it needs support.”

Kenneth Genest: “They had two of these in World War 2. One was called Tokyo Rose and the other Axis Sally. Their job was to discourage the American soldiers. I see they have one now at USA Today.”

Walter Scott. Jr.: “You simply suck! Merry Christmas.”

Jerry Martin, San Francisco, CA.: “Yet another self-defeating fool with a large bank account shoots himself in the foot. Their dissent equals treason. The terrorists got him just like all the other rich liberals who side against our victory. They forget that wars end, and then the country takes stock of who was where. I encourage the fool to keep mouthing against our victory over the Muslim jihad, he'll pay the social price in the end.”

T. Conway: “Mr. Neuharth has made a serious business mistake. Watch the circulation drop over the next year. The Los Angeles Times experienced the same drop after they attacked Gov. Schwarzenegger...some never learn. P.S. What side did Mr. Neuharth fight for in WW II?”

Peter Kessler: “And as for the good war, WW II, the lefties were four-square for that one. Yes sir, they were saving the USSR, Stalin and Communism. It's sad we didn't join Hitler until he wiped out the USSR. Alger Hiss and the Uptown Daily Worker (The New York Times) be damned. I see you've joined the club. Well, you're probably a founding member.”

Joe McBride, Fort Dodge, Iowa: “Mr. Neuharth, thanks to you and your ignorance the terrorists are probably booking their flights to the U.S. now! If we pull out of Iraq with the job unfinished the terrorists will be bombing McDonalds, and blowing up malls and schools here, killing our innocent men, women and children.”

Craig Wood, Waianae, Hawaii: “Today's press undermines our troops and supports our enemies. They convince parents that supporting your President is dangerous. They concentrate their ire on any fight that involves the United States and ignore all others. Like the sex scandal in the Congo with United Nations forces…. But, let some Army private put panties on an Iraqi's head and all hell brakes loose….I hope that the people of the United States will ignore or, at least, recognize the agenda of those that choose our enemies over our fine military.”

Duggan Flanakin, Austin, Texas: “Neuharth should be tried for treason along with a lot of other blowhards who should be spending their energies condemning the barbarism of our enemies, the same people who destroyed the Twin Towers. Evidence is pouring in that Saddam financed Al Qaeda with Oil for Food money, and that puts Kofe Annan into the line of fire as well for blame for September 11th. “

Boots Harvey, Brentwood, CA: “One must recall that Churchill had to put up with the likes of Lord Haw-Haw, William Joyce, and his propaganda during WWII. In the end William Joyce was executed for giving aid and comfort to the enemy during war time. Would that the same fate befall Al Neuharth!”

Mel Gibbs: “The Patriot Act will put both of you (Al Neuharth and Greg Mitchell) on trial for treason and convict and execute both of you as traitors for running these stories in a time of war and it should be done on TV for other communist traitors like you two to know we mean business. This is war and you should be put in prison NOW for talking like this. Who the hell do you people think you are? You give aid and comfort to our enemies and aid them in murdering our proud soldiers. You people are a disgrace to America. Your families should be put in prison with you, then be made to leave and move to the Middle East ...You two guys
are evil bastards…This is a great Christian nation and god
wants us to lead the world out of darkness with great leaders like
President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Communists like Al and Greg will soon be in prison and on death row for your ugly papers. We won the election and now you are mad. We own America and all the rights, you people are trash, go back to Russia and Africa and take your friends with before we put you on death row after a fair trial.”

Reading this, I thought of how amusing it would be if these people were confronted with incontrovertible evidence that the 9/11 attacks were in fact aided and abetted by the US government-- i.e. that 9/11 was an inside job.

Surely, if they were literally forced to confront the evidence, these people's heads would explode.

Webster Tarpley

If you have the time, I recommend you watch this video of a speech given by Webster Tarpley at a San Francisco 9/11 conference back in May 2004.

Really excellent material in there.

I can see why Nico Haupt is excited about Tarpley's upcoming book on 9/11.

He makes some interesting points about covert operations. Specifically, he describes the three main types of people involved in covert operations:
1) Patsies (the people who make their presence obvious and are eventually set-up for the crime).
2) Professional killers (the people who do the dirty work).
3) Moles (the people who control the patsies and the killers-- they infiltrate the government organization but work on behalf of private interests).

His 14 key reasons why the official 9/11 story is suspect:
1) Why weren't the alleged terrorists arrested before the act?
2) How could terrorists carry out the hijackings? (this is what I have focused on a lot here)
3) Were all the phone calls made from the flights authentic?-- they were "highly suspect".
4) Why were no arrests ever made for insider trading?
5) Why was there no air defense?
6) Was the Wolrd Trade Center a case of controlled demolition?
7) What happened to building 7?
8) What hit the Pentagon?
9) What crashed in Shanksville and how? Was flight 93 shot down BECAUSE the passengers were successful in taking back the plane?
10) What explains Bush's behavior on 9/11?
11) Why was the Islamic world blamed on the basis of no evidence?
12) What explains the drive for a totalitrian state in the US?
13) What explains the shift to pre-emptive aggression?
14) Who are the real September 11th criminals?


In the case of 9/11-- the patsies are obviously the Arab hijackers, and the moles are probably the neocons. What is completely unclear is who the "professional killers" are. But of course, these type of people always operate in deep deep secrecy-- so the fact is, we may never find out who they were.

New 9/11 Sites

"9/11 Busters"
Has videos of speeches by major players in the 9/11 truth movement.

"9/11 and the Impossible"
One huge page covering most 9/11 skepticism issues-- with an especially long section on the Pentagon hit.

Also-- I updated my links section: added these and removed some inactive sites.

Covert Operations and the Media

To be somewhat fair to the media-- or at least to honest reporters that work for the media-- one reason they cannot deal with events like 9/11 is that they cannot deal effectively with covert operations, especially if they imply criminal behaviour by the US government. And 9/11 was a covert operation, no doubt about it.

The reason reporters cannot investigate covert operations effectively is because these operations are set-up to be inherently contradictory and difficult to nail-down. The people involved in covert operations are seedy characters who simply can't be trusted. Reporters, even if they are honest, HATE this sort of thing because it is a tremendous amount of work and effort to figure anything solid out.

And then-- even if a smart and energetic reporter can sort out the extreme complexities and contradictions built into any covert operation, there is a very good chance that an editor will reject the story because it is not sourced or verified well enough for the major implications it might have for criminal behaviour by the government.

I have no doubt that this is one major reason there haven't any investigations into government complicity in 9/11 that resulted in published or broadcasted reports.

The biggest reason of course is institutional corruption of the media-- either by CIA infiltration or by major corporate interests. And as Mike Ruppert points out, there is a major overlap between corporate America and the CIA.

"Defense secretary's remark to troops fuels conspiracy theories"

Was the initial headline this morning on the front page of CNN. I was going to blog it earlier but my internet conneciton was acting up again.

Now the article is moved off the front page and the headline is "Pentagon: Rumsfeld misspoke on Flight 93 crash"
_________________________________________________________________
"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A comment Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made during a Christmas Eve address to U.S. troops in Baghdad has sparked new conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the speech, Rumsfeld made a passing reference to United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to stop al Qaeda hijackers.

But in his remarks, Rumsfeld referred to the "the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania."

A Pentagon spokesman insisted that Rumsfeld simply misspoke, but Internet conspiracy theorists seized on the reference to the plane having been shot down."
_________________________________________________________________
Damn those INTERNET CONSPIRACY THEORISTS!!!

DAMN THEM!!!!!

The Truth About 9/11 Truth

I have come to the sad conclusion that "9/11 truth" as a general movement is not going anywhere.

The simple reason is the press is never going to budge on their pre-conceived story-line-- at least for another twenty years or so.

Look at this story, where SecDef Rumsfeld essentially admits flight 93 was shot down.

This story has gotten no play at all. The press just DOES NOT WANT TO GO THERE.

I'm afraid that real 9/11 truth will be relegated to a bunch of "conspiracy nuts".

While probably a large percentage of the overall US population believes there is some sort of cover-up involving 9/11, there is a very big leap towards believing as I and others do, that 9/11 was a US government-sponsored covert operation. I very much doubt that more than 1% of the adult US population believes that the US government was complicit in 9/11. Such a small number-- even if this represents millions of people-- is never going to change public opinion.

Again-- the problem is that the mainstream US media will NEVER seriously consider the idea that the US government was complicit in 9/11. Thus, the great bulk of the population will never catch on to the great 9/11 scam.

However, I am curious about younger people in this country-- who get much more of their news from the internet. For instance, my brother-- who is in his early-20's and is not particularly politically involved-- actually believed back in 2002 that the Pentagon was hit by a missile. (I'm not sure if he still thinks this.)

I think, as younger people mature into a more powerful societal group in the next ten to twenty years, there will be a serious re-evaluation about 9/11.

Unfortunately, by then, 9/11 will be old history and many of the key governmental players long-retired or even dead. But some sort of truth will emerge, I think.

However, if anybody is hoping for a major US government shake-up in the near future based on 9/11 truth, I think they are dreaming.

Not that we can't dream, or that it isn't important to dream.

But what's needed FIRST is a major shake-up in the media-- that rearranges their priority from protector of the government to inquisitor of the government.

The "No-Planes" Theory of 9/11

A major proponent of this theory is Scott Loughrey (Gerard Holmgren and "Webfairy" are also supposed to promote this idea as well), and it holds that no hijacked planes hit the WTC towers or the Pentagon. Moreover, it holds that the famous TV footage showing "flight 175" hitting the south tower is a massive hoax perpetrated by a few network insiders who carefully spliced in fake footage of an airplane in the the South tower explosion. The same for the Naudet brothers and the Hlavel footage of the North tower hit-- but that needed much less manipulation as those came to light much later on and had poor quality images. The idea is that missiles were fired at the WTC towers to cause the explosions and the government waged a psy-ops campaign through the corrupt media (notably CNN) to make it seem like hijacked planes really were the cause of the damage.

While this theory is risible on its face, there are some aspects that cannot be dismissed easily. Moreover, in some ways, this theory is an attractive explanation for the events of 9/11.

I do have many problems with Scott Loughrey's site-- in that many of his essays or examples suffer from fatal flaws in logic. In fact, it is amazing that someone who can set up a web-site like this, with so many videos and pictures can be so (for lack of a better word) idiotic.

Nonetheless, I can't help but think that Mr. Loughrey is onto something.

Thus, here are the reasons that the "no plane" theory has some creedence and/or attractiveness:

1) If you go to the Memory Hole, they have police reports from the day of 9/11 (these are really very striking to read, if never have looked at them). But the point is that in the police reports, there were in fact eye-witness reports of missile being fired from the Woolworth building into the south tower. This is direct eye-witness testimony that is hard to refute.

2) No planes hitting the WTC towers or the Pentagon means you don't have to worry about how knife-armed hijackers took over four planes and navigated three of them perfectly to their targets. There is no need to posit planes being flown by remote control either.

3) If you look at videos of the WTC north and south tower hits-- particularly when the plane first enters-- they have a certain strange, almost fake quality, the way the planes sort of "melt" into the exterior walls.

4) The huge fireballs that erupted out of the sides of the WTC towers when they were hit-- was that simply due to exploding jet fuel or could it have been more likely caused by explosives?

5) The no-plane theory helps explain the strangeness of the Pentagon hit. In fact the Pentagon hit may have been an elaborate show done with shaped explosive charges.

6) Gerard Holmgren has found that there is reason to think that flight 11 and flight 77 never really existed-- in a normal sense anyway.

7) The news networks have in fact been inflitrated by the CIA, and are certainly capable of putting out disinformation. They have clearly put out some disinfo regarding 9/11 as well as the Wellstone assassination. Of course the technology exists to manufacture these images.

7) There is a kind of appealing counter-intuitiveness to the idea that no planes were involved in the 9/11 attacks, and a certain irresistible and hugely sinister "big lie" quality to this idea. The idea is so preposterous that people naturally won't believe it, which is why it can be an effective psy-ops.

Overall, I don't completely buy this theory-- but on the other hand, I think it is not so easy to dismiss as one might think initially. And it does have some explanatory powers.

If this is what happened on 9/11-- the images of planes hitting the WTC towers were faked-- we of course have to assume that there were fake hijackings carried out on some planes. But I already assume this is what occurred anyway-- as discussed in several previous posts.

In any case, let me know what you think. I appreciate any arguments either way.

It's Christmas Eve

Although I am not a religious person, I was brought up as a Christian (Methodist) and I enjoy celebrating Christmas with my family. Some traditions are nice to have, especially when you have children. And the message of Christmas is a good one-- a message of hope and peace.

I wish all of you who happen to stop by here once in a while a happy and healthy holiday season.

It IS hard to be happy sometimes, with all that goes on in this world.

But we can't take everything seriously ALL the time.

Peace.

Wellstone

I am slowly getting through "American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone" by Jim Fetzer and "Four Arrows".

One reason it's slow reading is because the writing really isn't that great-- the editing is a little sloppy and there is a lot of repetition. Moreover, it is slow going because it is not very uplifting material (similar to why I have a hard time getting through Mike Ruppert's book).

But overall the book makes a fairly convincing case that Wellstone was murdered. I think the case is mostly convincing if you are inclined to believe the Bush administration would do such a thing. I am inclined to believe this, but a lot of people probably won't be.

If you're interested in the topic, but don't really want to read the book, this essay by David Spring actually makes a lot of of the same points in a very concise way. The writer also makes this striking point:

This assassination was clearly the work of an organization with very sophisticated, high tech weapons at their disposal. Those who carried out this mission must have had plenty of experience in this kind of thing. Moreover they would have needed a lot of contacts with the corporate controlled media. Like with 911, the spin doctoring occurred so rapidly that it must have been prepared and put into place well in advance of the hit.

(Emphasis added)

This "spin-doctoring" is a key point when I think back to when Wellstone was assassinated. I was watching CNN at home, and they had breaking news with Wolf Blitzer about the plane crash. As "American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone" dosuments, Blitzer went out of his way to blame the crash on poor weather--- over the protest of the reporter on the scene. This type of shocking manipulation of fact was key to down-playing any hint of foul-play. And it worked-- no news organization even hinted at darker reasons for the plane crash. (This incident also makes me wonder if Wolf Blitzer is a CIA operative-- this would not be too surprising given that the US media is known to be infiltrated by the CIA, and would explain a lot about his reporting.)

As David Spring put it:

Given the clearness (no matter how poorly reported) of both the motive and method, the group who pulled this off must have felt confident they had so much control over the media and the police that they would never be caught. This group must have so much power that they no longer even care about conspiracy buffs connecting dots. In assassinating Wellstone in broad daylight, they clearly felt like they were above the law. Perhaps they felt this way because they now are the law.

Indeed.

What really is shameful is how willing people are to overlook any hint of government complicity-- despite the fact that there were clear motives for taking out Wellstone.

Overlooking any hint of government complicity is of course also very similar to how people have dealt with 9/11 -- despite clear motives and clear problems with the official story. But, the media played a large part in this phenomenon for shaping key early public opinion, and for that they deserve our eternal condemnation.

Fascinating Maps of the Cuyahoga County Vote-- Patterns of Vote Suppression

Showing what looks like a clear pattern of "spoiled" ballots in African-American precincts.

Sorry I don't do pictures here, but I highly recommmend you go look. It is amazing. Something very strange happened with the black vote in Ohio-- no doubt about it. Something strange and insidious.

Interestingly, and relatedly, there is a rumor on Democratic Underground that Kerry is going to speak out tomorrow on the vote fraud issue.

I can only hope he has something good and nails Bush hard. He must have something good if he's willing to come out about it.

Back to 9/11: NORAD Interceptors Could Have Still Played an Important Role Even without Shoot-down Orders

This article reminds me of something I've long thought:

"According to a Boston Globe article, when intercepting aircraft, NORAD practices a graduated response. The approaching fighter doesn't immediately shoot down the bogey: It can first rock its wingtips to attract attention, or make a pass in front of the plane, or fire tracer rounds in its path. So even though on 9/11, the NORAD pilots working the first three airliners didn't have shootdown authority (they got it only after the Pentagon was hit), they would or should have been ready to try these other techniques, which might well have spooked or forced the hijackers into turning, which might have given the fighters a chance to force them out to sea. And even if the hijackers decided instead to fly right into a fighter in their way, wouldn't an airburst have killed fewer people than two collapsed flaming skyscrapers did?"

Seems like a good point to me.

On the other hand, on 9/11 it was almost as if there was a concerted effort to prevent NORAD interceptors from reaching the hijacked planes so they could even attempt these basic maneuvers.

9/11 Seems Like Ancient History Now

Although 9/11 was a HUGE deal and only a little over three years ago, the Iraq war is really the big show now. Iraq is so fucked up, so expensive and so nasty, it is basically starving other potential major scandals of oxygen.

And now, hardly anyone seems to care HOW we got stuck in Iraq. Now the question is-- how do we win? Or even-- can we win?

My feeling is NO, we can't really win. The best thing to do, as far as I am concerned, is declare victory and leave. Maybe the US will do that after the elections-- it's possible.

The longer we stay, the more fighting there will be, and the more people will die. It's that simple.

Some people say if we leave, Iraq will erupt in a civil war. My thinking is: there already is a civil war going on. In essence-- it's the Sunnis, who will lose most of the power, fighting the Shias, who will have power after an election. It may not be a full-scale civil war, and our presence is diverting much of the hatred, but in essence, the insurgency is composed of Baathists (Sunnis) trying to get political power away from the Shiites.

In any case, the sooner we leave Iraq, the better. We will be leaving sooner or later-- the only question is how many of our soldiers and how many Iraqis have to die before we realize that this war is a hopeless cause?

But I feel that Washington DC will never get this, and we are stuck having to replay Vietnam.

This brings up the question of the draft. Because we can't maintain a troop presence in Iraq without a draft. And bringin up the draft is political poison for Bush.

The only way they could institute a draft without serious backlash is if there is some sort of "event".

I really worry a new terror attack is on the way. A new terror attack that really would make 9/11 seem like ancient history.

In this regard, you might want to keep your eyes on Houston.

It's Always Sad When You Find a Dead Blog

For example Tristero has hung up his blogger's cap. Not that he was a regular read for me, but he was a good liberal blogger.

I found a couple of other dead blogs today as well.

Bush Likely Ordered Torture at Military Prisons.... and on it goes

Here.

And the prisoner abuse story keeps getting uglier and uglier.

Meanwhile, Iraq continues its descent into the depths of hell.

But of course, the American media machine must go on -- gotta keep the people happy so they can keep shopping!

In any case, I keep going back-and-forth on whether there will ever be any scandal that REALLY shakes up this most evil of administrations.

Some days I think Bush will just get away with everything.

Other days, I feel he has done too much to get away with it all. He HAS to go down.

You would think there has to be some Republicans with a conscience and the urge to do the right thing.

Moonie Madness

This is just friggin' unreal:

This wintry season, as the faithful continue to receive alarming reports from the news that Republicans are all that stand between them and the outlawing of Christmas itself by hordes of secular humanists, the two presidents Bush have endorsed a powerful conservative interest group specializing in removing the cross -- not from schools or courthouses, but from churches.

Rather than the traditional egg hunt, this group, calling itself the American Clergy Leadership Conference, sponsored a nationwide "Tear Down The Cross" day for Easter, 2003. Last week, leaders in this radical cause presided over a Washington prayer breakfast featuring messages of thanks from the presidents. Former Senator Bob Dole came in person.

Mostly African-American, pastors who joined in 2003's ACLC-sponsored "Tear Down The Cross" won gold watches from the wealthy group, which unabashedly claims in its publications to have stripped churches of over a hundred crosses over the Easter holiday alone. This, movement leaders said, cleared the way for a new age and second messiah.

Speaking of messiahs, make a quick stop at the web site of the ACLC, and it's clear there's more to it than the “rapidly growing movement of clergy committed to the endeavor of making this nation the best that it can be," as the ACLC described itself in a December 8 Washington Times op-ed. It's actually a vehicle for Sun Myung Moon, the billionaire conservative donor who calls himself the True Father.

Read the whole piece-- it's frightening, really.

Bottom line-- Moon thinks he's the messiah, and that's why he wants to get rid of the cross. It's a way of crowning himself the new king-- the messiah.

I can only hope the Bushes are merely using Moon for his money.

(article found via Eschaton)

Here is the Key Piece of the Puzzle

On 9/11/01, NORAD ran a live-fly hijacking exercise (Vigilant Warrior/Vigilant Guardian)

How do the other 21 pieces (see below) connect into this piece?

The Great 9/11 Hijacking Puzzle (in 22 pieces)

So how exactly do all these pieces fit together?!?!


1) Prior to 9/11, extensive contacts were made between the Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda members and US- and US-affiliated intelligence agencies (in particular the Pakistani ISI). In one particularly striking case, two of the 9/11 hijackers, who were allegedly Al Qaeda members, lived with an FBI informant in San Diego.

2) Prior to 9/11, NORAD ran several "live-fly" exercises simulating hijacking of commercial planes.

3) Prior to 9/11, several wargames/military exercises were run simulating hijacked planes crashing into buildings.

4) Prior to 9/11, several "terror drills" were run on the ground simulating the hijacking of commerical planes by terrorists.

5) Prior to 9/11, in July 2001, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld changed the authorization procedure for shooting down hijacked airplanes, such that shootdown authority must be obtained from the Secretary of Defense rather than a regional commander.

6) On 9/11, NORAD ran a live-fly hijacking exercise (Vigilant Warrior/Vigilant Guardian).

7) On 9/11, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) was supposed to run an exercise simulating a plane crashing into their headquarters in Virginia.

8) On 9/11, four commercial planes were "hijacked" and three buildings were apparently struck by hijacked planes.

9) On 9/11, officially NORAD failed to intercept any of the hijacked flights, demonstrating a stunning lack of air defenses-- particularly around Washington D.C., which should be highly protected air space. Unofficially, flight 93 was likely shot down, but evidence pertaining to this idea was strongly suppressed and not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

10) On 9/11, each hijacked plane lost its transponder signal.

11) On 9/11, not one of the eight pilots managed to convey to air traffic control that there was a hijacking occurring, not even by turning the transponder to 7500-- the hijacking code.

12) On 9/11, seven pilots all went mysteriously silent, while one pilot on flight 93 made a "mayday" call and said "get out of here" three times with sounds of a struggle before going silent.

13) On 9/11, the captains of each hijacked plane were big, strong Vietnam veterans who were somehow overwhelmed by relatively smaller and slight middle eastern men supposedly armed with small knives.

14) On 9/11, the captain of flight 77, had previously planned and participated in terror response drills at the Pentagon.

15) On 9/11, despite minimal flight training and no previous experience flying real Boeing 757s and 767s before, the hijackers managed to navigate hundreds of miles and then going full-speed, strike perfectly three out of three targets. In particular, the WTC towers were only 200 feet wide and a Boeing 767 is 160 feet wide-- thus these were very narrow difficult targets to hit. The Pentagon is only about 60 feet tall, and a Boeing 757 is only 30 in height, yet the plane apparently impacted perfectly between the first and second floors, without touching the ground in front of the Pentagon.

16) On 9/11, passengers' cell phones worked surprisingly well on the hijacked flights, when normally cell phones do not work well in mid-flight and in rural areas.

17) On 9/11, President Bush's security was amazingly unconcerned about his safety when a national emergency was occurring.

18) On 9/11, the French Naudet brothers had the amazing fortune to be filming a documentary about NY city firefighters near the WTC. One of them then had the uncanny ability, when he heard a jet go overhead, to zoom his camera to the North WTC tower-- where it was being hit by an airplane.

19) After 9/11, black boxes were apparently recovered from the rubble of the WTC towers, but their existence was denied by officials. Black boxes were reportedly recovered from the Pentagon, but the contents of the boxes has never been released to the public.

20) After 9/11, video and photographic analyses show anomalies with the planes that hit the WTC towers and anomalies with the pattern of damage at the Pentagon. A video was released of the Pentagon hit from a security camera, but this video raised more questions than it answered. Other video cameras that might have filmed what happened at the Pentagon had their videos confiscated by the FBI.

21) After 9/11, Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, lied brazenly when she said no one had ever considered the possibility of hijacked planes being used as missiles to strike buildings.

22) After 9/11, reports came out in major news organizations that in fact NORAD had simulated hijackings and planes crashing into buildings prior to 9/11. This interesting fact was completely ignored by every news commentator in the mainstream news and was also completely ignored by the 9/11 Commission.


If anybody out there has any good ideas for how this all fits together, please let me know!

Plane Swap was Likely Part of the 9/11 Live-Fly Hijacking Exercise

Clearly, one of the more unbelievable aspects of 9/11 was that terrorists with minimal flight training could fly hijacked planes so efficiently to their respective targets-- striking them perfectly in three out of three attempts. (I tend to believe the Pentagon was hit by some sort of plane -- even if it wasn't a 757.)

Another problem with the idea that the hijackers piloted the planes is that it seems likely that the hijackers were special agents, probably CIA assets, that were posing as Al Qaeda. Thus, it is not likely that such men could be willingly recruited to become suicide pilots.

To get around this "piloting problem", 9/11 researchers have postulated other scenarios for how planes were piloted into the WTC and Pentagon. The most reasonable alternative mechanisms for how planes were piloted into their targets are:

1) the hijacked planes contained real pilots and passengers and were taken over by some sort of remote control piloting system, or

2) the hijacked planes with pilots and passengers were not flown into the targets but rather remote control drones were flown into the WTC and Pentagon.

The main problem I have with the first scenario is that you have to postulate that a commercial plane was outfitted with remote control technology that could be activated at a certain time, which seems somewhat unlikely. Also not clear is what would happen with the real pilots when this system is activated. I have trouble accepting that knife-wielding hijackers could kill or subdue the pilots eight out of eight times. But if the pilots were not dead, wouldn't they try to contact air traffic control if the plane could not be controlled? Finally, if the real "hijacked" flights were crashed into the WTC, why were the black boxes found there kept a secret? Thus, this scenario seems less likely than the second one.

The second possibility, the use of remote control drones, can explain the anomalous Pentagon hit and can also explain why the planes that hit the WTC didn't look quite right.

All that being said, the big question I have wrestled with for a couple of months now is: how exactly did the NORAD live-fly hijacking drill that was run on 9/11 (apparently termed "Vigilant Warrior/Vigilant Guardian") mesh with the terror attacks of that day?

Here is my best guess:

NORAD, the USAF and the CIA planned the live-fly hijacking drill to test the response of NORAD to a real terrorist hijacking situation where terrorists took over commerical planes and flew them into buildings. This sort of drill had been simulated bfore, but this time they wanted to make the exercise more realistic. What they did was set-up planes with mock hijackings but at the same time they also wanted to have real planes that were supposed to fly into buildings that they could try to shoot down. I believe, therefore, the planned exercise was to have a plane-swap, such that there were remote-controlled drones instead of passenger-laden planes that would be intercepted by NORAD and shot down. This would be the official scenario. The drones were SUPPOSED to be intercepted or shot down before they hit their targets. The plane swap could be done when the "hijacked" passenger plane had its transponder turned off, and this was a key feature of all four "hijackings". Looking at the live-fly hijacking exercise this way, it makes a certain amount of sense for the plane-swap with remote control drones to occur.

I believe this was the nature of the exercise: there was a live mock hijacking of commercial jets and at the same time, there were remote-control look-alike planes mimicking the hijacked planes that were programmed to strike the WTC and Pentagon.

Of course, the exercise went horribly awry-- most likely as part of a malicious plan.


Here's what I think happened:

1) Real commercial planes with passengers took-off and there was a mock hijacking with "Al-Qaeda" hijackers inserted onto the planes by the CIA. These were the flights 11, 175, 77 and 93. (That the "hijackings" were merely acted out explains the lack of a hijacking alert from the pilots of these planes as well as the odd nature of many of the phone calls from these planes.)

2) A key feature of each "hijacking" was turning off the transponders to allow these planes to swap places with drones.

3) The "hijacked" planes landed at special air force bases along the routes of the real flights (there is such a base in upstate NY that could be used for flights 11 and 175.)

4) As the "hijacked" planes landed, remote control look-alike drones took off that were programmed to fly into their targets (the WTC and Pentagon).

5) the planes that landed on the ground continued the hijacking exercise, pretending they were flying and that the hijacking was still occurring-- hence the phone calls. (This exercise was similar to the "terror drills" that were acted out on airplanes prior to 9/11-- as described by Nico Haupt.)

6) the remote-control drones hit their targets.

7) the pilots, passengers, and hijackers of the "hijakced" flights were killed in some unknown manner after the drones hit their targets-- once the nature of the disaster was clear. Most likely the original hijacked planes were directed to fly to some remote area where they were shot down.

It is unclear if Flight 93 landed and underwent a swap with a drone-- or if flight 93 was meant to be "special".

This of course is all somewhat speculative as well as very grim. But this is my best guess of how the live-fly hijacking exercise was set-up.

Of course, a simpler alternative is that a live-fly hijacking exercise was run by merely inserting Al Qaeda operatives on the planes. They were supposed to "act out" a hijacking but actually they took over and flew the planes into the targets. There are a few problems with this theory and I think it is less likely than what I have outlined above. First, this theory assumes the hijackers really were excellent pilots (when there is no reason to belive this). Second, it assumes that hijackers armed with box-cutters and knives and mace could take over four planes out of four attempts-- all without the pilots alerting ATC of a hijacking. Third, this theory assumes that the fact that NORAD had run drills simulating planes crashing into buildings before 9/11 had nothing to do with the 9/11 hijackings. These are major problems with this theory.

Another alternative is that the hijackings of flights 11, 175, 77 and 93 were not connected in any way with the live-fly hijacking exercise run by NORAD on 9/11/01-- this was just an incredible coincidence. However, the NORAD exercise did interfere with an effective interception of the hijacked planes. This theory runs into the same problems as described just above-- the improbability of excellent hijacker pilots and the improbable effectiveness of box-cutters and knives and mace for taking over planes.

If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know! My goal, believe it or not, is to get at the truth of 9/11/01, not to spin wild theories. The goal is how to reconcile the improbability of highly skilled hijacker pilots and the improbable effectiveness of box-cutters and knives and mace for taking over planes with the fact that there was a live-fly hijacking exercise run by NORAD on 9/11/01.

(Note-- this post was edited extensively on 12/20/04.)

The "Mayday" Call from Flight 93

According to the 9/11 Commission Report and the Official 9/11 Story(TM), the closest any of the four 9/11 flights came to warning air traffic control (ATC) of a hijacking was flight 93 who sent out a "mayday" distress call followed by sounds of struggle and the words "get out of here" repeated, more sounds of struggle, then nothing more from the pilots until the hijackers apparently made a call over the intercom to the passengers about staying in their seats.

All this happened supposedly right after ATC warned the pilots of flight 93 of the possibility of cockpit intrusion.

It is curious that even though the pilots were WARNED of cockpit intrusion, the cockpit intrusion still happened AND that they weren't more prepared to fight off the hijackers.

What is most odd is the sequence here.

"Mayday" is a distress call, to be used only in a dire emergency. So why exactly is the pilot calling "mayday" in this sequence?

One possibility is that a hijacker has entered the cockpit and is grappling with one of the pilots. We can assume it is only one hijacker because of the "get out of here" that comes later. But does this warrant a "mayday"? Why doesn't the pilot say "someone has entered the cockpit and is fighting with the pilot"? Why such a general "mayday" call? Has something else happened?

Another possibility is that the pilot yelling "mayday" has been wounded by a hijacker as is making a last desperate call on the radio. But then why does he say "hey, get out of here, get out of here" 30 seconds later?

Another possibility is that this sequence of events is all an act being put on for the benefit of ATC, and the pilots got confused and made up some lines that in retrospect don't make a lot of sense.

In light of my general theory on the 9/11 attacks, I have to think the last possibility is most likely.

Again, what strikes me as incredible is that none of the four flights signaled a hijacking on their transponder (this is an easy manipulation) NOR did the three other flights call anything like "mayday". This is just too hard to believe that the hijackers could take six pilots on three planes without one "mayday" call.

The one "mayday" that occurred was AFTER the pilots were warned of hijackers.

Thus, on 9/11, in every hijack situation, the pilots responded extremely poorly -- more poorly than one would ever expect-- considering the hijackers were armed with only knives!

How to View the Plame Affair

This is a view I really didn't have one year back, but now seems very logical:

Tuesday, September 30, 2003
While I suppose it is fun to use the Wilson/Plame/Rove situation to attack the Bushites, and the incident may create a short-term partisan advantage for those opposed to the junta, and it would be very nice to see Rove do the perp walk, Cryptome has a much deeper truth:

"The idiot furor over naming Valerie Plame as a CIA officer, and the CIA's phony call for an investigation, should not obscure the need to name as many intelligence officers and agents as possible. It is a hoary canard - long-practiced intelligence disinformation - that naming these persons places their life in jeopardy. On the contrary, not identifying them places far more lives in jeopardy from their vile, secret operations and the overthrow plots they advance. These officers, their agencies and governmental funders want their names kept secret so they do not have to face retribution for cowardly misdeeds they are fearful of executing openly."

It is impossible to disagree with one word of this. There is certainly a great deal of irony in the continuing pattern that the Bushites make all their political hay on purporting to fight the 'war on terror', while simultaneously doing everything they can to subvert that war, in this case rendering ineffective an operative who was working on combating weapons of mass destruction. But the contradictions are everywhere. Bush can destroy the economy with his tax cuts, starve social programs, allow corporadoes to rape the country, destroy the environment, and start an illegal and immoral and extraordinarily expensive war, and nobody seems to care. When the CIA is insulted, suddenly it becomes a national issue. It was inevitable that the arrogance and stupidity of the Bush Administration thugs would lead to their picking on a foe who could fight back, but the CIA reaction shouldn't obscure the fact that this isn't a battle of Good against Evil, but just a contest to determine the greater of two Evils. While Democrats piously develop a concern for the well-being of CIA employees, some of these same employees are working right now to subvert the democratically-elected government of Venezuela.
Link.

Found via "Oil vs Empire".

Overview of the Corrupt 2004 US Election

from Ken Reiner in Newropeans-Magazine:

Take stock of this fact! It is now going on five weeks after what I think we should call "Black Wednesday", the day Kerry conceded the election to Bush, after knowing full well the problems hundreds of thousands of African Americans who tried to support his election had in casting their votes, just as they tried to do in 2000 for Gore, who also wouldn't give them the time of day! And despite the testimony of many thousands of voters denied their voting rights, or made to wait excessive times in line to vote, or after being given faulty information as to the location of their voting district booths, they were denied the vote when they showed up at those wrong locations, nothing about any of this appears in the U.S. local or national media!

Just in the key state of Ohio alone, which was the state that allegedly gave the presidency to Bush, not a single word disclosing that there are serious investigations of electoral fraud being undertaken against American citizens attempting to exercise their right to vote and to have their votes counted, in Ohio's corporate newspapers or TV stations, or any mass media nationally,

All this against a bizarre background of our government demanding that the election in the Ukraine, halfway across the world, be declared fraudulent and void and calling for an immediate new election! Our 2004 election was even more fraudulent and also needs to be immediately repeated, with paper ballots this time. Yet our newspapers and TV are full of commentaries on the Ukraine election fraud only. Amazingly, nothing about our voting system failure for a third time in a row; in 2000, 2002 and now in 2004. If this isn't front page news I can't imagine anything that is! Has Joseph Goebbels been reincarnated and put in charge of the American press?

There is one dominant reason, in my opinion, for this non-reportage. The elite, who control our corporate society and run this country through their banks, Federal Reserve system and the bought and paid-for Congress, and who also own every major media outlet, know that Joseph Stalin once declared: "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything".

Were Americans to ever learn how corrupt their elections are, and how few choices they are given, they might rise up and change the entire system by which corporations run the country. The elite will do everything in their power to keep the people from learning just how crooked the system is. With the power of the press and TV under their total command, which we now clearly see, they likely will try every way they can to keep this fraudulent election, as they did with the prior two elections, out of the gaze of "we the people". After all, by reason of false media control, the majority of Americans, even today, are still convinced Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, despite Bush (and everyone but Cheney) admitting "evidently they didn't".

What can you and I in America do about this?

The internet, along with word of mouth, is the primary avenue of communication "we the people" have left - now that our airwaves have been removed from our control by "our" representatives in Congress who turned them over to corporations for free. And it is an extremely powerful communication tool, in many ways potentially more powerful than the "mass media" which enters our homes daily and attempts to confuse and misinform us as to the happenings in our communities, the nation and the world. For accurate news we must henceforth rely primarily on the internet, on free and illuminating news resources, like "Common Dreams", "Information Clearing House", "Truthout" and other such informative websites which bring news from all around the country and the world to us instantly and capably, and without interpretation. And it is on the internet that we can band together in instant communication, a virtual national and even international community of "we the people" that can speak, and make demands of each other and from our government representatives, from the authority of great numbers, such as has been done by "Moveon.org", as only one of many examples.

Right now, today, we must make our demands known that we will not accept another four years of Bush, or a continuation of the savage war against the Iraq people which he continues conducting to gain control of Iraq's oil fields and refineries. You and I are also still free to pass news of fraud, conspiracy or discrimination and form powerful associations to bust open the veil of silence of the corporate media. We must all communicate with them and tell them we will stop buying their papers and watching their shows if they don't immediately, prominently disclose the investigations of election fraud that are going forth by numerous non-corporate organizations, groups and parties.

Never before in the history of America have there been as many claims of computer errors and abuse of voter rights as has happened this year. To hear nothing about it in the press and on TV is the ultimate in cover-ups. Tell them we will not tolerate that. Point out that the only radio shows that are reporting what is really happening are those that are non-profit, publicly backed, such as Pacifica. Ask them why, with such limited budgets do they have more complete and accurate news than the multimillion dollar networks which have big bucks but are so silent?

I am stuck between apathy that contacting any media outlet will accomplish anything and the need to scream at the corruption going on in this country.

Yeearrggh!

Depressing Reading

Gary Webb's chapter in "Into the Buzzsaw"-- "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On": how the major media destroys stories that pull the mask off the ugliness that is done in the name of national security, particularly ugliness done by the CIA.

John Kelly's chapter in "Into the Buzzsaw"-- "Crimes and Silence: The CIA's Criminal Acts and the Media's Silence": how the media (and both political parties of course) completely ignore the horrendous crimes done by the CIA around the globe-- murder, torture, etc. The CIA commits 100,000 criminal acts a year according to Kelly.

"American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone"-- the title basically of speaks for itself. But this is a VERY disturbing book that rigorously presents the argument that Paul Wellstone was murdered by the Bush administration because he was in their way-- he was blocking their gaining control of the senate.

This Daily Kos thread on how most Democrats just don't seem to care about the clear disenfranchisement of African American voters that occurred in the last election-- particularly in Ohio. I agree it is outrageous. I wish I had an answer or a solution.

Of course Iraq continues to be depressing, the torture stories continue to be depressing, and the GOP continues its descent into lunacy while the Democrats continues their slide into irrelevancy.

All in all, this country seems to have lost its soul, or any sense of decency. Perhaps this happened a long time ago, and I am only just realizing it now. Either way, I really am NOT proud to be an American right now.

But other than that-- it's Christmas and don't we all feel joyful? Let's all go shopping!

9/11 Hijacker Tactics-- Bottom Line

To emphasize--- the bottom line for me dwelling on how the 9/11 hijackers might have taken control of the planes, is NOT to say that it is impossible that hijackers armed with knives, boxcutters, mace, and fake bombs could have taken over four planes. That part, while slightly unbelievable, is in the realm of possibility.

What I find in the realm of IMPOSSIBILITY is that hijackers armed with knives, boxcutters, mace, and fake bombs could have taken over four planes WITHOUT ONE PILOT EVER ALERTING AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL THAT A HIJACKING WAS OCCURRING.

This means, either that;

1) the authorities are covering up the hijack alert by the pilots because it means there was a severe failure on the part of NORAD, or

2) the pilots never alerted ATC of the hijackings, meaning that the hijackings did not occur the way the official narrative portrays them.

Mike Ruppert Writes An Obituary for Gary Webb

"A Giant Falls".

Excerpt:
"Webb's August 1996 series Dark Alliance for the San Jose Mercury News pulled deep covers away from US covert operations and American denial about connections between the CIA and drugs. Gary left a bigger historical footprint than anyone who has ever touched the subject including among others, Peter Dale Scott, Alfred McCoy, Jonathan Kwitny and me.

His footprint was made possible in large part for two reasons. First, his reporting was meticulous and produced hard records that could not be effectively denied. Second, prominent African-American leaders like Jesse Jackson and representatives Maxine Waters and Juanita Millender-McDonald of Los Angeles and Compton respectively took up the torch lit by Gary and ran with it just before the 1996 presidential election which saw Bill Clinton win his second term just eight weeks after the stories broke. I was there at that time and it is not an understatement to say that much of this country was "up in arms".

Waters at one point vowed to make the CIA-drug connections, fully documented by Webb, her "life's work" if necessary.

In death the major press is beating him almost as ruthlessly as they did in real life. No part of the major press has acknowledged that Webb's work was subsequently vindicated by congressional investigations and two CIA Inspector General's reports released in 1997 and 1998. FTW did report on Webb's vindication and his legacy has - at least at the level of authentic journalism - not been lost."

The forces of darkness may have won this round, but let's make sure that we, the good guys, get the final word.

This is IMPORTANT for the future of our country.

US Giving Up the Hunt for Osama

Reported by the UK telegraph.

Shouldn't this news set off huge alarm bells among every US citizen? Is there any better proof that Osama is a CIA asset and that 9/11 was an inside job?

9/11 Hijacker Tactics, Part IV

The weapon that would have helped the 9/11 hijackers tremendously was of course the handgun. And for some reason, there was an early report that on flight 11, one of the passengers (Daniel Lewin) was shot by a gun. This story was later retracted though and all we heard about was knives, boxcutters, mace and bomb-like devices. This early report of a gun is strange, since it conflicts with other reports from the hijacked planes, but the retraction of the gun story is even more strange. Nonetheless, for various reasons, it is likely that guns were not used by the 9/11 hijackers.

Reasons to think guns were not used on 9/11:
1) the phone calls from the hijacked planes do not decrsibe guns being used
2) it would be too risky for the hijackers to smuggle guns on board

However, where did this report of a shooting on flight 11 come from?

Possibilities:
1) the hijackers did have guns but this was covered up because it made the airlines too liable for security failures. This would also mean the other calls from the hijacked planes were either edited to leave out information on guns.
2) the 9/11 hijackings were fake all along, and there was early confusion about what sort of cover story to use as to how the planes were taken over.
3) the hijackers did not have guns, and this call describing a shooting was simply the result of confusion.

I lean towards number two, myself.

9/11 Hijacker Tactics, Part III

The 9/11 hijackers, allegedly operated in groups of four to five. While this is clearly a substantial amount of "muscle", they were after all only armed with small knives and mace, at best. On each flight they were outnumbered significantly by the passengers. And, as pointed out by Jere Longman in his book on flight 93 "Among the Heroes", the hijackers were not particularly large or athletic men-- assuming the hijackers are who the FBI says they are (a bit of a leap of faith).

The point is that the hijackers had to have a good strategy to take control of the airplane, since they couldn't do it easily by brute force.

Thus, what was their strategy?

There are three basic ways they could have attacked, as far as I can see.

First-- several of them could go straight up to the cockpit, ram themselves in, and kill the pilots-- hopefully for the hijackers they could catch the pilots still in their seats, where they would be more vulnerable. Once they had the cockpit, the flight attendents and passengers wouldn't matter very much, except that early on in the attack, the flight attendents and passengers would be near the cockpit, could see the struggle, and could intervene. Certainly there would be enough the flight attendents and passengers that could subdue a few smallish, non-athletic knife-wielding men. I can't believe there wouldn't be enough people who would attack the hijackers if they could see they were taking over the cockpit. I know I would. So, this strategy is not the best for the hijackers.

Second-- the hijackers could threaten and scare the passengers before taking over the cockpit, and get them to move to the back of the plane. This way, the hijackers could storm the cockpit without immediate interference from the flight attendents and passengers. Indeed, this strategy of moving the passengers to the back would seem to be what occurred on several of the 9/11 flights. However, there is one large problem with this strategy. A flight attendent could use one of the phones that allows communication with the cockpit, tell them there was a hijacking, and then the pilots could call ATC and alert them they are hijacked. But THIS DID NOT HAPPEN, and thus this second strategy is unlikely.

The third strategy is a mixture of the first two-- have say two hijackers push passengers and flight attendents to the back of the plane, while the other two take on the cockpit (we should probably assume that the hijacker pilot stays out of the melee, since he is needed to control the plane and cannot be hurt). While this strategy would get around the problems of the first two strategies, it leaves another problem-- a poor manpower ratio. In this strategy, we are expected to believe two hijackers armed with only knives can kill the pilot and co-pilot four out of four times? This is just not believable. We can assume they didn't use mace in the cockpit, because it is a small space and filling mace in that small area would preclude the hijacker effectively piloting the plane. Moreover, in this strategy, we are expected to believe that two hijackers armed with knives and mace and a bomb-like thing can hold at least forty flight attendents plus passengers at bay. This defies belief as well.

So, the fact is, none of these strategies would seem to be effective for the hijackers, and it defies common sense that any one these strategies would work four out of four times to take control of the planes.

Importantly, try to put yourselves in the shoes of the hijackers. Would you base the success of this whole incredible mission on the chance that you would be able to effectively take over planes armed with only small knives and mace? I actually can't see how "Al Qaeda" would ever expect such a mission to work. Moreover, the whole set-up of the hijackers, from the fake-bombs to the red bandanas on flight 93, screams out that it is some sort of mock hijacking exercise, a "terror drill" if you like.

According to official 9/11 story, on several planes there were flight attendents or passengers who were stabbed and presumably killed. Supposedly somebody tried to fight back-- unless this was just part of the exercise. Why more people didn't fight the hijackers (except in the special case of flight 93) is not clear. Perhaps you wouldn't fight them if you thought they had a bomb-- but then, why would anybody try to fight them? So this again is something that doesn't fit. However, the hijackings of 9/11 do make more sense when viewed as some sort of mock hijack, with passengers and flight attendents playing roles in this "play". Many of the cell phone calls made from the 9/11 flights make more sense when viewed in this manner as well.

9/11 Hijacker Tactics, Part II

(Part I is the previous post)

Besides knives and boxcutters, the hijackers supposedly used mace and/or pepper spray as well as fake bombs.

While the fake bombs might scare some passengers, I do not think that a bomb-like device would help them get rid of the pilot and co-pilot, which was essential to their scheme. In other words, if the hijackers were going to blow the plane up, whhy would they care about who is flying it? Also, it is not clear how they got these devices on board in the first place-- surely something obviously bomb-like would have been detected by even the worst airport screener. Did the hijackers assemble the "bomb" in flight? This is somewhat hard to believe. The fake bomb device actually sounds quite a bit like what was used in the terror drills run on airplanes prior to 9/11, as described by Nico Haupt and his colleagues.

With regard to the mace and/or pepper spray, when used with a good knife, this could indeed be a deadly combination. That is, spray mace/pepper spray in the eyes to disable the person, then stab them. Although a bit tricky to pull off, this could work. It is not clear if this tactic was used however. The 9/11 Commission report only refers to using mace/pepper spray as a way of clearing out the passengers from the front of the plane. If the hijackers indeed did this, it is incomprehensible that one of the flight attendents wouldn't call the cockpit and warn the pilots of a hijacking. And then the pilots should have alerted air traffic control. Again-- the fact that this didn't happen is a giant hole in the official 9/11 narrative.

Mace/pepper spray in theory should have been something that wouldn't have been allowed on the plane. It is not clear why the hijackers would have taken a chance of this getting caught before they boarded. But if they indeed got it on board, then this could have increased their effectiveness significantly.

I still don't understand how the mace/pepper spray would prevent a pilot or co-pilot from punching in the hijacking code to the transponder or just making a radio call to ATC that there was a hijacking.

The Most Ludicrous Aspect of the Official 9/11 Story (9/11 Hijacker Tactics Part I)

While there are many parts of the official 9/11 story that are hard to believe, the one part that really made me realize the story was a pack of lies was learning that not one of the four hijacked planes ever alerted air traffic control that they were hijacked.

The closest warning of a hijacking from a pilot was from flight 93-- where ATC heard a radio transmission from the plane of "mayday!" followed by sounds of a struggle (9/11 Commission Report). Then 35 seconds later, there was another radio transmission from flight 93 where the pilot was saying "hey get out of here-- get out of here-- get out of here" (9/11 Commission Report). This in itself is curious-- since the order of these transmissions is the opposite from what you would expect-- that is that first you would hear "get out of here", with sounds of a struggle, then "mayday". What made the pilot say "mayday" first?

Of course, the only way ATC learned of the hijackings was that the transponders went off and the phone calls made by passengers.

In fact, there is a simple and quick and subtle way airline pilots can alert ATC of a hijacking-- they press the code 7500 into the transponder. This code is even mentioned by the 9/11 Commission Report. According to "Crossing the Rubicon" by Mike Ruppert, this code can be punched in from the pilots steering column-- so it is not as though the pilot has to strain to press in the hijacking code.

So, anyone, please tell me--- how on earth did hijackers armed with only knives and boxcutters get into the cockpit and take over control of the plane without one of the two pilots pressing 7500 into the transponder (or even yelling "hijack" into the radio)?!?!?! And how did this happen four different times?!?!?! IT MAKES NO SENSE.

By all accounts, in every plane, the hijackers stabbed some of the flight attendants and some of the passengers before they took over the plane. So it is not as though there was no struggle and the hijackers just quietly slipped into the cockpit and quickly slashed the pilots' throats.

In any case, it defies belief that one of the flight attendents didn't call the cockpit and warn them that dangerous men were charging the cockpit.

Therefore, I defy anyone to give a plausible explanation for how the hijackers took over all four planes by force in a way that is consistent with the official 9/11 story. In fact, to make it interesting-- I will throw in a cash reward for anyone who can tell me what happened. Minimum $20, and I'll go higher if the story really has a lot of plausible detail.

Of course, one reason people don't question this aspect of the 9/11 story is because they have no other explanation for what might have been happening on those planes. That is, people think the hijackers MUST have been able to do this because there is no other logical explanation.

Well, first of all, it is interesting to note that according to firefighters who worked at the WTC disaster clean-up, three of four black boxes from the "hijacked" planes were recovered. The FBI is covering this story up, and indeed, the 9/11 Commission Report says that the black boxes WEREN'T found.

So what might these black boxes be hiding? Most likely the fact that these "hijacked" planes weren't really hijacked in the sense we have been told.

My guess is that these black boxes show one of two things. Either:

1) the planes that crashed into the WTC were drones piloted by remote control that weren't really flights 11 and 175, or

2) the hijacking of flights 11 and 175 was a drill or simulation-- until the pilots realized they had no control of the plane because the plane was being controlled remotely. In which case, the frantic sounds of the pilots were recorded as they struggled to retake control of the plane before it crashed.

The remote control theory is invoked to explain how these poorly trained hijackers could pilot three giant aircraft with such amazing precision into their targets. The idea that these hijackers who trained on little Cessna planes and Boeing flight simulators could pilot the hijacked planes so perfectly into three out of three targets is perhaps the SECOND hardest thing to believe about 9/11.

What is certain, and I feel this to the depth of my being, is that the official 9/11 story is a horrendous lie foisted upon the American people.

Further thoughts: One other possibility is that the pilots DID indeed punch in the hijacking code into the transponder, and that ATC WAS alerted, but that this is being covered up. Why would it be be covered up? Becuase this would mean that NORAD screwed up in their response even more than it did according to the official story. Perhaps NORAD screwed up because of the hijacking wargames that they were running that day. Overall, I find this possibility somewhat unlikely because, in contrast to the remote control theory, it has to assume the hijackers truly were great pilots. Second, it doesn't explain why they have kept secret the recovery of the black boxes. Although one could postulate that they were hiding the hijack alert data that was in the black boxes from flight 11 and flight 175, they still could have selectively released some flight data recorder data (as they undoubtedly did with flight 93).

In general, the whole official explanation for how the attacks succeeded rests on the fact that the hijackers were very sneaky and subverted the normal hijack alert system. Clearly this is wrong at some level. Either ATC was alerted of hijackings via the normal route and this is being covered up OR the normal hijack alert system was subverted because the hijackings were part of some pre-planned hijacking exercise that was intended to fool ATC. I tend to think the latter, but can't rule out the former.

NIST Responds

Over five weeks ago I sent the following e-mail to wtc@nist.gov:

Dear NIST Investigators--

Can you please tell me if you can absolutely rule out the use of pre-planted explosives in the WTC 1 and 2 towers as well as in WTC7 that caused or accelerated their collapse?

Also, could you please tell me if you tested any of the pieces of metal you recovered for traces of explosives?

As you may know, there has been a lot of speculation about the causes of the WTC collapse, and I was hoping if you could help settle the issue.

Thanks very much,XXX

Well they actually finally responded (on a Sunday afternoon for some reason):

Thank you for your interest in the NIST World Trade Center Investigation. NIST’s investigation of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers includes a thorough review of data on the buildings and analysis of plausible collapse scenarios. As part of the investigation, NIST is carefully analyzing thousands of photos and video clips taken from the time of aircraft impact to the time the buildings collapsed. NIST’s efforts also include first-person data collection from survivors, family members who were in touch with victims after the aircraft impacts on the buildings, and first responder emergency personnel. Among the contents of these first person data are observations of the damage conditions in the buildings following the impact of the aircraft. NIST has reviewed this extensive body of visual evidence and first person data collection and has not found any evidence of explosive or incendiary materials in the buildings. NIST has determined that the fuel load that existed in the furnishings and office equipment in the towers was sufficient to sustain the fires that were observed.

Computer modeling performed by NIST and its contractors indicates that a number of support columns were damaged or severed during aircraft impact. NIST has determined that the damaging or severing of columns and other structural members, and the dislodging of spray-applied fire resistant material from many other building structural members as a result of the aircraft impact, rendered those remaining structural members sufficiently susceptible to heating by the fires to account for the building collapse.

NIST issued a June 2004 progress report on its federal building and fire safety investigation into the WTC disaster and information on this update is available on the WTC investigation web site at http://wtc.nist.gov. Also available on the web site are the presentations from the fifth National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee meeting that was held on October 19 and 20, 2004.

The NIST World Trade Center Investigation web site is a good source of information about the investigation. Updates on the progress of the investigation and published technical reports that result from the work being conducted are available through the web site.

WTC Administrative Support Team

See? They have found no evidence of explosives!

That settles that!

Ha ha, just kidding.

Note-- they didn't say if they actually tested for explosives.

Election 2004-- What Really Happened?

Well, a lot of people think Bush stole the election, but there is little proof right now. (There is some proof, but nothing to convince our wonderful media yet.)

In any case, this article is a reasonable overview of the election, and concludes that either:
a) Bush won by vote fraud, or
b) negative campaigning works much much better than anyone ever thought (the thesis being that Bush was much more negative on Kerry than vice versa).

Of course, it could be a combination of the two-- some vote fraud (there certainly was serious vote suppression in Ohio) and very effective negative campaigning against Kerry put Bush over the top.

For the Greater Good

While evil done in the name of the US is nothing new, the level of pure malignant evil is off the charts for the past four years.

A few prime examples:

1) the anti-democratic appointment of Bush into the presidency

2) the looting of the US treasury with tax cuts skewed towards the rich

3) the 9/11 attacks-- which were carried out by elements of the US government and likely facilitated by Dick Cheney

4) the anthrax attacks-- which were carried out by elements of the US government and which targeted Democratic senators

5) the assassination of Senator Paul Wellstone

6) the bombing and terrorizing of Afghani and Iraqi civilians during the respective invasions of these countries

7) the torture at Abu Ghraib, Guatanamo, and other US-run prisoner-of-war detention facilities

8) the razing of Fallujah and the murder of unknown numbers of civilians there

9) the suppression of black votes in Ohio and Florida during the 2004 election

10) the likely manipulation of votes via electronic machines that are not subject to recount and verification

11) the disregard for any sane environmental policy

12) war profiteering by Halliburton and KBR


These evils can ALL be laid at the doorstep of Bush and Cheney, and the GOP.

(that the media mostly completely ignores these horrors is another story. And no one can seriously say Clinton did anything close to as bad as anything this current crew has done.)

The point is-- how can Bush and Cheney and their GOP lackeys live with themselves? Don't their consciences bother them?

The answer is that I'm sure these men know that have done evil. But they rationalize it as a neccessity for their greater goals-- for what they perceive as the "greater good".

So what ARE their goals?

Clearly, a major one is securing access to oil supplies for continued large US consumption. This is nothing new-- what is new is the lengths to which they are willing to go to get this.

Another major goal is to enrich the oligoarchy and to return to an older, more archaic time, with less parity between the sexes and even less parity between workers and the ruling classes.

Possibly another goal is to set the seeds for a large reduction of the world population, which likely will have to occur in the next twenty years as oil supplies radically diminish.

So all the evil that has been done in the past four years is rationalized as for the greater good of the US-- no matter who gets killed in the process. The "greater good"-- as defined by them.

The question for us, then, is what can we do to combat this evil?

Perhaps the best thing anyone could ever do is to find a new, cheap, plentiful and safe alternative energy source that can be used by the entire world-- so we can avoid future wars and related trauma caused by diminishing resources. This may be fantasy to think such a thing could be found, but it also may be the only real answer.

Note: Jeff Wells has a must-read post relating to the evils done by our current leaders.

Why Is Dick Cheney Such a Royal Asshole?

I don't know.

Clearly he is one twisted individual.

Was he was abused as a child? Did his parents neglect him? Does he have some strange disease that causes complete loss of morality? Or does he just have a genetic predisposition towards evil?

I can't find much in the way of biography on Cheney on the net. I suppose this book could give some clues, but I haven't read it.

Anyone out there have any ideas about what is wrong with Big Dick Cheney?

Doesn't this Sound a Little, You Know--- Theatrical?

From "Among the Heroes" by Jere Longman, p. 143:

Jeremy Glick describes the hijackers--- "They looked Iranian. They put on red headbands and the three of them stood up and yelled and ran into the cockpit."

Red headbands?

Is this really believable? That the hijackers would put on red headbands before starting the hijacking?

How come no one on any of the other hijacked 9/11 planes talked about red headbands?

Was someone putting on a show on flight 93?

The New Hampshire Recount is Bad News for Uncovering Vote Fraud

The Nader-led effort to recount New Hampshire may have been inspired by the best intentions, but unfortunately, the recount may badly undermine uncovering any new vote fraud.

The fact is, New Hampshire was never a great place for vote-fraud in this election. First optical scan ballots leave a paper trail, and thus it is very unlikely that massive fraud would be perpetrated with these, when it could be uncovered so easily by hand counts. Second, the huge vote-swings seen in some precincts between the 2000 Gore vote and the 2004 Kerry vote were never going to be the way vote fraud was done. These vote swings, while odd, were way too obvious.

Any real vote fraud would have to be very subtle and use electronic machines withouit a paper trail.

The major problem NOW is that the Republicans and Die-bold can point to the New Hampshire recount and say, "See? Everything is legitimate". This will have a very detrimental effect on other efforts to uncover vote fraud.

Mark my words.

And given Nader's history, you almost have to wonder if he did this intentionally.

Five Thousand US Soldiers Horribly Wounded in Iraq-- 10,000 Wounded Overall

While the death rate in Iraq for US soldiers is relatively low because of improved medical treatment, the rate of severe injuries is very high and the rate of amputees is twice that of previous wars.

I think it is only fair that Bush and Cheney visit each and every one of these soldiers with amputations or severe head injuries and tell them the war was worth it.

Personally, for me, seeing that many maimed and disabled young men would be overwhelming. I don't think I could take it-- particularly if I were responsible for sending them to Iraq in the first place.

I have to wonder what the consciences of Bush and Cheney look like? Do they ever have nightmares? Do they even have consciences?

An Excellent Letter to the Editor on Proof for Vote Fraud Stories

From Democratic Underground (which seems to have incredible voting threads of late):

I thought this letter deserved it's own post. There have been several posts by DUers who have received replies from media that the fraud story is not legitimate and not newsworthy because we have no conclusive proof (I know, we disagree, but that's their tagline). This DUer, a GREAT newbie, suggested this response.

Original thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

nmoliver (38 posts)
I'd reply like this:

Proof? What was the proof of Whitewater wrongdoing? What was the proof of WMD's in Iraq? What was the proof that Saddam Hussein was tied to 9/11? What was your proof that the Paula Jones case had credibility or validity? Did you keep these stories out of your newspaper until you had tried the case and proved it? What proof did you have that the election was stolen in Ukraine? The exit polls? Yeah? Did you keep that from your newspaper because you didn't see the proof?

You don't need to have proof of wrongdoing to report that thousands of people are actively questioning the legitimacy of this election, that there have been congressional hearings with testimony and witnesses and statistics and data, that there have been FOIA lawsuits to get audit logs of the computers, that Mitofsky has refused to hand over his raw data but has admitted that he changed his methodology late on November 2 to conform to the tallies.

You are not the judge and jury of the news, passing verdicts on it before it makes the front page. You are obligated to report the sides of the story, the controversies, so that your readers know that these differences of opinion are ripping at the fabric of our society.

What you are confessing here is that you are setting yourself up as censors, suppressing information about vital controversies going on in our society because you already have your opinion about it.

My friends, that is not your job.

Right on. I also think there would be money to make on this as well.

Well Now I Just Don't Know What to Think

Apparently now they are saying that the 2004 election exit polls had a much higher sampling error than normal due to their "cluster" modeling.

Gack. It's very complicated, but it would seem to take the wind out of the sails for exit polls showing massive vote fraud.


There still were problems with the election, no doubt--- it's just that maybe we shouldn't make a big deal about the exit polls.

Fuckers. I really wish they had been more forthcoming earlier. It would have saved a lot of people a lot of grief.

New Hampshire Recount --- Is There Still Evidence of Fraud?

The Nader requested New Hampshire recount is apparently not showing any changes in the vote tally. It seems as if they are doing a hand-count, though it doesn't say for sure. But they mention catching errors in the optical scan ballots that the machine doesn't read.

What seems to have happened is in a few NH precincts, the Kerry vote was way off from the Gore vote in 2000. In one case, there was a 20% swing. But the recount seems to be saying these were legitimate swings-- which is interesting and weird but nothing fraudulent.

However, the other thing is that New Hampshire was where the exit polls were WAY off.

According to exit poll data that I got from Democratic Underground, the final Kerry vote was off from the exit poll number by almost 5%, which was over twice the margin of error for the exit poll.

So, there are two possibilities here.

One, is that the exit polls were fundamentally wrong, and there was no vote fraud, or

Two, there was vote fraud that led to the exit poll discrepency, but it was in other NH precincts than the ones they did recounts on.

Unfortunately, since they didn't find any real changes in those 11 precincts, they probably won't count the rest of the state, and we'll probably never know.

What would be nice is if the exit pollers would release their data-- do they have exit poll data for the recounted precicnts and if so did it match the vote tally? If it did match, then that would support the idea that the exit poll was accurate and there was fraud elsewhere. If it didn't match, then it would show the exit polls were off for some apparent reason.

NH uses about 80% optical scan machine, and 20% punch cards.

If we assume there WAS vote fraud that helped to put Bush over the top, it probably wasn't anything really obvious like those weird swings in the 11 NH precincts. It was probably skimming Kerry votes at a certain frequency in direct record electronic (DRE) voting machines (the kind where you can't recount)-- at such a low level you might never see it by statistics.

In fact, there is some evidence for this sort of fraud, in that scores of voters reported that their Kerry votes kept switching to a Bush vote. Of 89 incidences where there were problems with these machines and the votes not going to the right place, 86 were votes for Kerry that switched to Bush. That's VERY suspicious, and you have to wonder how many thousands of times this happened all over the country without people knowing?

Between this sort of apparent cheating and the clear irregularities and vote suppression in Ohio, this could easily give Bush his overall edge.